Toni shook her finger at Novikov. “Do not be a bad influence on my brother.”
“Who says I am?”
“Did you let him swing from your tusks like a monkey?”
“They’re not tusks,” Blayne snarled as she carried more bottles of orange juice to the sink. “They’re fangs. Like the mighty saber-toothed cat of yore.”
Coop looked at his sister. “Yore?”
“Shut it!” Blayne snapped.
“Are you throwing out all that orange juice?”
Blayne pointed a damning finger at Livy. “It’s her fault!”
Livy raised a finger and they all silently waited for her to shoot back a retort. But after nearly a full minute, she suddenly jumped up from the table and tore out the back door.
Smirking, Blayne nodded. “That, my friends, is karma.”
“That, Blayne,” Toni corrected, “is snake poison.”
With a shrug, Blayne went back to pouring the perfectly good juice into the sink. “You say tomato . . .” she muttered.
Toni found her mother sitting on the couch with Ricky’s mother. The rest of the kids were either on the couch with them or on the floor in front of them. They were all watching TV and eating popcorn. Thankfully, it seemed that Ricky’s sister had wandered off—much to Toni’s relief. She was more than happy to face that particular hurdle another time.
“Where’s Irene?” Toni asked her mother.
“Bathroom, I think.”
“Well, I have the notebook.”
“Good,” her mother said around a mouthful of popcorn. “Irene will get it back to Miki.”
“Where is little Freddy?” Miss Tala asked.
“He and Novikov are bonding.”
Jackie’s eyebrows went up. “Which entails . . . what? Exactly?”
Before Toni could answer, a shifted Novikov charged by the living room entrance in all of his fifteen feet of bear-lion glory with Freddy hanging onto his back, giggling hysterically. Her feet frozen to the spot she stood on, Toni reached her arm out, somehow believing she could pluck her insane baby brother from Novikov’s back.
As Novikov romped up the stairs, Blank came charging after him.
“I’ll get ’em!” she screamingly promised. “I’ll get ’em.”
As the three of them disappeared up the stairs, Ricky Lee ambled into the room, hands dug into the back pockets of his jeans.
Toni gestured to the stairs. “It didn’t occur to you to not let that happen?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
Disgusted, Toni sighed, and looked back at her mother, which was when Ricky felt the need to add, “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t let that happen with our kids.”
That’s when everyone in the room focused on them, the eyebrows of both mothers now raised.
“What?” Ricky asked. “Why y’all lookin’ at us like that?”
“Do you really think,” Kyle asked, “that a Jean-Louis Parker would ever lower him or herself to be permanently involved with a Reed?”
Miss Tala looked at Toni’s brother. “I don’t think I heard you correctly, Kyle Jean-Louis Parker. Especially if some young jackal I know ever wants to taste my award-winning chocolate chip cookies again.”
Kyle forced a smile at Ricky. “Please, take my sister and permanently enslave her to your backwoods way of life. I’m so excited for her.”
“Kyle!” Toni snapped.
“What?”
Toni held up the notebook. “Where is Aunt Irene so I can just give her this?”
“There’s an earthworm on that thing,” Troy pointed out.
And, in response, Toni squealed and tossed the notebook at her mother, but her aim was bad and she ended up hitting Cherise in the forehead.
Cringing, Toni quickly apologized. “Cherise, I am so sorry.”
“No, no. It’s all right. I do so love to randomly get hit in the face with nature.”
“You’re frightened of earthworms?” Ricky asked her, his voice low and right by her ear. She could tell he was grinning just from the sound of his voice.
“They’re gross.”
“Princess.”
“Shut up.”
“You,” came an accusatory voice from the archway, and Jess the wild dog marched in, dragging a clearly mortified Johnny DeSerio with her.
“Oh, hello, Jess,” Jackie said with a smile. “How are you doing?”
“Don’t ‘hello, Jess’ me.”
Realizing this was bad, Toni immediately stepped in. “What’s wrong?”
“Show them,” Jess ordered Johnny.
“Ma—”
“Show them.”
“Show us what?” Toni gently urged.
“I got this email from a . . .” He studied the piece of paper he held in his hand. “Uh, Donato Mantovani?”
Immediately recognizing the name, Toni’s mother sat up straight, the bowl of popcorn barely saved from falling to the floor by a quick-handed Miss Tala. “What did he say?” Jackie demanded. “What did he say?”
“I . . . I don’t think it’s what you’re hoping for, Jackie.”
“Just tell me what he said.”
“He said, ‘I received the MP3s of your music sent by Signora Jean-Louis for my evaluation, and I can only say that your music did not offend me.’ ”
There was nearly a minute of silence before Jackie clapped her hands together and cheered, “I knew it! I knew it!”
Confused, Jess Ward snapped, “What is wrong with you, woman? How can you think this is positive?”
Undaunted, Jackie explained, “It’s incredibly positive.”
“It is?” Johnny asked.
“Do you know what he said to me about my music when I had a private audience with him? ‘What was that?’ ”
“He told me,” Cherise interjected, “that there was no shame in being a good wife and mother.”
Coop, who’d walked into the room a few minutes before, offered, “He told me that I was nearly tolerable. Sort of.”
“Wait,” Jess cut in. “Who is this guy?”
“The long-time conductor of the Milan Philharmonic,” Toni told her.
Grinning, Jackie added, “I played with the Milan Philharmonic when I was eight years old. By the time I was ten, I was playing for kings.”
“I played with the Philharmonic when I was sixteen,” Cherise added. “And with the London Philharmonic for Her Majesty, about two years after that.”
“I was nine,” Coop said. “I had my first record deal the following year.”
“Wait, wait.” Johnny gripped the piece of paper in his hand, his gaze on the floor. “So what you’re saying is . . .” He shook his head. “What are you saying?”
Jackie stood up. “That we need to get you ready. Based on that email, I think we’ve got . . . three months?”
“Maybe,” Coop hedged.
“Right. Maybe three months before you’re playing on stage for an audience in Milan.”
Johnny shook his head. “Yes, but . . .”
Jess faced her adopted son, her smile wide and bright like the sun. “Now can I get you that Stradivarius?”
“God, Ma, no!”
Livy was resting against a tree, her eyes closed, her body slowly recovering from the recent poisoning. She loved how tough she was to kill but sometimes the recovery could be a bitch. Especially when vomiting was involved. She hated vomiting.
A cool towel was pressed to her forehead and she opened her eyes expecting to see Toni, but it was that big Russian bear-tiger hybrid crouching in front of her. If she remembered correctly, Toni said his name was Barinov. Vic Barinov . . . maybe.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I’m not dead so, ya know . . . win.”
He chuckled a little. “Very true.”